Intelligent Travel

Chicago Chow

IT never turns down a good food post, especially if it involves Chi-Town . Escaping from the Uno/Lou Mitchell/Gino's trap, former intern Ali Busacca names a few lesser-known Chicago eateries (and a famous-for-a-reason pizza joint):

In a city known for its deep-dish pizza, I found a few other tasty, cheap eats, beyond the traditional 16-inch pie.

For great late-night takeout Try Express Carry-Out and Delivery (3555 N. Broadway; +1 773 549 7077), for everything from gyros and chicken souvlaki, to tilapia and ribs—all with a side of sweet potato fries, for less than $15.

For great Thai Go to Joy's Noodles in the Boystown neighborhood. Most dishes are less than $7 and portions are large.

For great atmosphere Take a picnic lunch to Navy Pier, and set up at the far end for a great view of the North Shore skyline. Getting there is a hike, but there's a free trolley that runs from the red line station at State and Grand.

And for great deep dish Check out Lou Malnati's. The best deal for an entire pizza is the 'Lou,' but if you want a smaller portion, a personal sausage or pepperoni pizza served with soup or a house salad is only about $6 before 2 p.m.

Insiders Vancouver, Blog Edition - The Sequel

National Geographic Traveler's April issue hit the newsstand two days ago, bearing into the world a feature article by IT's very own Jessie Johnston: "Insiders Vancouver." Not all of Jessie's firstborn was delivered in bound form, however, so we decided to share the remaining portions with you here. Without further ado, three more tasty Vancouverite morsels (the first three ran on Tuesday):

Insiders Vancouver, Blog Edition

National Geographic Traveler's April issue hits the newsstand today, and within its august pages you can find a feature article by IT's very own Jessie Johnston: "Insiders Vancouver." As is often the case, not all of Jessie's precious words were lucky enough to make their way from the original manuscript into the final published version. Some of those tasty leftovers will be reheated and served in future issues, but we thought we'd share the rest with you this week, while they're at their freshest. Herewith, three tips from notable Vancouverites (tune in Thursday for the rest):

Rocks Rock

IT's always looking for ways to fight the boredom on long road trips, so we asked self-professed "nerd-bomb" and current geologist Katie Howell to tell us her favorite way to pass the time. She writes:

The road trip, that rite-of-passage, growing-up phenomenon, happens across America every summer. Beforehand, it seems so exciting and romantic, but then you're stuck in the back seat of the minivan with your mischievous little brother for ten hours, and anything seems more pleasant. So you do things to fight the boredom, to relieve the antsiness, and to ward off your annoying sibling who won't stop saying 'Are we there yet?' Games, quizzes, stories, books. You name it; my family did it. But enjoying the natural scenery was always my favorite activity on long road trips as a kid. Nowadays, it's enjoying the natural scenery and then explaining the geologic significance to whoever is 'lucky' enough to be riding with me. I know, I'm a nerd.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have an in-car geologic tour guide like my co-road-trippers. (On our last family vacation, my sister argued—and won!—that for every volcano I dragged them to in Hawaii, she got an extra hour on the beach.) That's why it's lucky for you that Mountain Press realized this plight and has an entire series of books devoted to just that subject: roadside geology.

DIY Guidebooks

Travelers whom wild horses couldn't keep from a particular city (think Jessie and London, or Jerry and Paris) will be psyched about a new product that showed up in IT's mailbox: the Moleskine City Notebook. These combination guidebook/journals help you organize all those places you won't want to miss the next time around, and they're a heck of a lot more reliable than our usual method of keeping track (ye old noggin).

IT checked out the New York City edition, and it seems pretty handy. There's everything you need to navigate the city: an extensive section with maps (including subway), a street index, and nifty translucent sheets for tracing itineraries over maps. The tabbed "archive" section is definitely geared for repeat travelers, but first-time visitors with no plans to return can still use it (and the 76 blank pages) as a travel journal, and then marvel at the ease of passing on recommendations to friends following in their footsteps.

Each City Notebook is specific to a particular destination, and they are currently available for a number of cities in Europe and the U.S., with Asia on the way. Canada waits with baited breath.

Traipsing Through Tourist Traps

Moving on is the way of all interns, but we here at IT have never been very good at dealing with the departure of our key allies in the war on boredom (i.e. blogging). After all, one of us was a Traveler intern who managed to never leave; why can't all the others follow suit? In order to alleviate some of the pain caused by intern Katie Howell's departure, we're running one of the blog entries she bequeathed us before beetling off to Turkey:

In my former life as a geology grad student, I found myself crisscrossing the continent several times in search of fabulous rock outcrops and out-of-the-way mountain ranges. In doing so, I spent many a long day seeing only tumbleweed as scenery. My solution to fight eight-hours-on-an-interstate boredom: Stop at every side-of-the-highway tourist trap that came along. So I'll admit, I've seen a few: the world's largest ball of twine, a Davy Crockett statue in a town he never set foot in, and a creepy wax museum in Natural Bridge, Virginia, to name a few. Needless to say, when I get bored on a long drive, it doesn't take much to lure me off the interstate. Here's a rundown of my favorite tourist trap detours.

 

Wired Wanderlust: Iowans in Wide Open Spaces

Some may argue that it's bad journalism to write an entire blog post about your friends. But what if their experiences are too cool not to? Assistant online editor Mary Beth LaRue thought she'd send a little link love to her fellow world-traveling University of Iowa alums, but only because she thinks you'll be glad she did.

Amanda Del Sur—Twenty-five-year-old Amanda May's yearlong stay in Buenos Aires is captured in an array of bright colors and stark arrangements on her photo blog. Amanda shot with a Canon EOS 20D and traveled to Rosario, Mar del Plata, and Colonia, Uruguay. She says, "I tried to show the beauty within the ugliness of Latin America. I think of the blog as an abstract documentary." Now working as a waitress in Iowa City, camera aficionado Amanda is working on launching her photography career.

The Sun Also Rises… In Oak Park, Illinois

Discovered at a National Geographic Traveler writing seminar, Brett Ashley McKenzie won IT over with her unique pitch and her literary name—she tells us her mother named her after Lady Brett Ashley from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, "because she hoped that I would always grow up to be a writer and because she didn't want my gender to be evident on college applications." Just as her mother hoped, she writes:

Ernest Hemingway once described his hometown of Oak Park, Illinois, as 'a place of broad lawns and narrow minds.' Had the author lived to spend a weekend there today, he might have held his tongue.

This Week's Bloggers

Hypothetically, if Emily King, Traveler's assistant to the editor, had to choose her honeymoon destination today (and funds were unlimited), she would rent a bungalow in the Maldives. Researcher Jessie Johnston, answering under duress, concedes that she'd spend it in a cabin on British Columbia's Pacific coast.

In the Navy: A Night on the New Jersey

Need a hotel in Philly? "Try a decommissioned warship in New Jersey," suggests senior editor Norie Quintos, who recently returned from a trip with her kids. She explains:

I never was a Girl Scout. Not much of a joiner, I guess, or maybe the cookie quota demanded too much capitalist enterprise. However, a part of me always envied the gals in green who got to go on field trips and earn those merit badges. Well, I sort of got my wish last weekend, when I, my two tween-aged sons, and about a dozen scouting troops boarded the permanently docked Battleship New Jersey (in Camden, just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia) for an overnight encampment. After seeing service in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and other sundry international battles, the massive warship—eventually made obsolete by smaller, nimbler vessels—retired and became a floating museum. Think of it as a cruise, but without the chocolates on the pillow, yoga on the pool deck, or midnight buffet.

Top Stops

Always on the lookout for the bloggable, Marilyn Terrell (and her magnificent RSS feed) comes through again with a useful post about stopovers:

On their way to Nairobi last summer, my friend and her two sons stopped over in Dubai for the night. Dubai? I hadn't known you could do that. 'It really broke up the long flight,' said my friend, and knowing her perpetual-motion 11-year-old Tyler, I can see the benefit in that. 'Plus, I wanted the boys to see the contrast. Dubai is so over-the-top.' Her dazzled sons agreed: 'It was awesome!' The rest of the three-week trip they spent exploring mostly non-electrified rural villages in Kenya and Tanzania, where my friend had worked with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps years earlier, so the contrast with Dubai could not have been more dramatic. Their Dubai story primed me for a post I saw last week on Smarter Travel, one of the excellent contenders in the recent Travvies.

Here's a sample of their roundup of airlines that offer free or low-cost stopovers in cool locations:

Air Tahiti Nui offers low-cost stopovers in Tahiti on some through tickets from the U.S. to Australia or New Zealand, including economy class, with hotel rates starting at $100 per night double occupancy.

Super Saunas

Every once in a while, we here at IT let National Geographic Traveler's researchers loose on a factoid frenzy, and allow them to share some of the wonderful wackiness they discover while fact-checking articles for the magazine. So far you've had the pleasure of such geek-out posts from both Marilyn Terrell and Jessie Johnston, but the third of our mystery-solving musketeers, Ingrid Ahlgren, has to date never stepped up to this particular blogging plate. That's all about to change. Today, Ingrid goes to bat with a blog about saunas, inspired by a fact-checking frisson she experienced when working on a story about Helsinki:

When I studied abroad in Stockholm during college, I loved going to the saunas. They seemed to be everywhere: hotels, homes, public swimming pools, even the dorms at Stockholm University.

Party in Paree

After returning from his winter holiday in London and Paris, National Geographic Traveler's art director, Jerry Sealy, couldn't stop telling his colleagues about a peculiar experience he had in the City of Light. After some prodding, IT convinced him to share the moment with you:

The night my friend Kathryn and I arrived in Paris, we planned to eat at Fish La Boissonerie, a new restaurant on the Left Bank. But new friends (some Americans we met on the RER train from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Paris) invited us to join them at Jim's Dinner Club. Dinner club? It sounded warm and cozy. I pictured a table of twelve, a crackling fire, quiet conversation, classic French cuisine…and very good wine.

Yoga + Reggae = Yoggae?

Our staff yogi, assistant online editor Mary Beth LaRue, ditched her HTML duties and D.C.'s cold weather for a week of downward dog at the Negril Yoga Centre on the west coast of Jamaica. And has she ever got tips (and pictures—click the links!) for you:

Stay cheaply Our accommodations at the yoga center were modest, but it didn't matter, because we were across the street from a beautiful stretch of white sand beach, reggae joints, and jerk chicken stands. All-inclusive resorts offer a lot for one price, but they also leave you little incentive to leave the premises, a must if you are in Negril.

Freaky Food Fest

IT's eaten fried rattlesnake and sautéed fiddleheads, but we must admit, freelance travel writer Katie Nerenberg's Fear Factor-esque post has our stomach turning:

On a road trip up the west coast of New Zealand's South Island last March, I became a bit obsessed with one particular entry in Let's Go New Zealand: 'If it crawls, it's dinner at the phenomenally popular Wildfoods Festival, during the second weekend in March. Opossum, kangaroo, and grasshopper are among the tamer entrees. Book accommodations at least six months ahead.' It was six days before, but no problem—we were driving a 1991 Nissan Vanette with a double bed in the back.

You Really Like Us!

If we could travel back in time to Oscar night, we would admonish our past selves for being so critical of people's acceptance speeches. As the recipients of the first-ever Best Travel Blog award from the Travvies, we now completely understand how hard it is to express gratitude in an articulate, brief, sincere, and non-tedious manner. (Especially since even if you do get it right, like Sally Field in 1985, you'll still be misquoted.)

Thanks are due, however, so we'll do our best and hope you won't reach for the remote: Thank you, thank you, thank you! We couldn't have done it without the support of all our readers, both old hands and those of you who discovered us because we were nominated. We hope you'll all keep reading (and telling friends, family, and strangers on the street).

We also want to offer our congratulations to all the finalists, against whom it was an honor to compete, and to the winners in all the other categories: Exposed Planet for Best Photography on a Travel Blog, The Cranky Flier for Best Single-Author Travel Blog and Informative/Practical Travel Blog, our friends The Lost Girls for Best Group-Written Travel Blog, and NewYorkology (a regular IT read) for Best Destination Blog. We'd also like to cordially invite all of the winners to contribute guest posts to future editions of IT. Stay tuned for their sure-to-be-awesome contributions.

This Week's Bloggers

Emily King,Traveler's assistant to the editor, and researcher Jessie Johnston are at a loss for words, for once.

Map IT

IT loves maps, especially those depicting the aches and pains of U.S. citizens on any given day. Today's forecast? A painful morning in Albany, NY; a rather comfy one in Key West. Aside from pain, Weather.com offers a slew of Travel Smart maps, tracking everything from business travel (a map posting airport delays across the country) to illnesses (one indicating each state's incidence of influenza outbreaks). Check out the Earthquake Report (things look a bit shaky in California), the Interstate Forecast (looks like a good day for that cross-the-country drive on I-70), or the Golf Index Forecast—let's just hope your once-in-a-lifetime Pebble Beach tee time wasn't today. IT's verdict: Al Roker's Doppler has some competition—Emily's just found a new way to piddle away her morning.

Philly Belly

When IT first launched, we took you along for some delicious meals enjoyed by both your bloggers in that notorious "eatin' town," Philadelphia. Having attended college in the suburbs of brotherly love, Jessie frequently tolerates the vagaries of New Century Travel to revisit her old haunts, and over Presidents' Weekend enjoyed some affordable Philly food she thought you'd want to know about:

The eating began in the Italian Market, with my now traditional (twice is tradition, right?) veggie hoagie at Chickie's followed by a visit to Termini Bros. In addition to the requisite cannoli filled with chocolate-chip-and-candied-fruit-laced ricotta, we had the aproned assistant place a fig bar (made with whole hazelnuts and marsala wine), a slice of tiramisu, and a concoction of meringue, buttercream, chocolate and almonds, onto our paper-lined tray. Our large hoagies (my friend Margaret had a prosciutto special) served as both lunch and dinner, and the string-tied box of goodies from Termini lasted the rest of the weekend.